In A Mirror, Shadowed
by forthwrite
Summary: AU where Afghanistan happens differently, very differently. A dark! - or at least darker! - Tony Stark is forced to make some very difficult choices.


He staggers out of the Humvee, trying to get as far away from the fire as possible. He manages just a few steps before the pain in his side cripples him, sends him sprawling to the ground. He lies there, staring up into the hot desert sun.

_His head is underwater, held there for too long. Much too long. He's yanked up, above the water, and his mouth opens, to breathe some of that glorious, glorious air . . . and water rushes in, drowning him, suffocating him. He sputters, drawing more water into his mouth._

_He tries to breathe. He wants to breathe. He . . . he can't breathe._

_He wonders how long this will last._

_How long it _can _last. _

_How long _he_ will last._

'Mr. Stark?'

He hears a voice calling his name. He can tell he's lying on a bed, but he doesn't think it's his. Did he maybe stay over at a girl's house? He doesn't think so; he normally brings the girl to him. Anyway, he can't remember her, or any part of last night, and he doesn't normally get _that _wasted. He tries to open his eyes, but the best he can manage is a weak sort of flutter.

His chest hurts, a strange dull throb that's nested deep in the center of his being. Was he shot? He can't remember. He raises his hand tentatively to touch his chest, afraid of what he'll find. He's not too optimistic, and he's expecting blood, scarring, maybe some stitching if a doctor's looked at him already.

He brushes his fingers against the bands of pain, and feels something cold, metallic. He tries to sit up, to pull the sheet off so he can look at himself, but there are hands pushing him down, a cup forced between his lips, and he feels himself drifting again.

'Mr. Stark?'

'Call me . . . call me Tony,' he chokes out. His mouth is dry, parched. He's desperate for a drink. An alcoholic drink would be nice, but he'd settle for some water.

He manages to pull his eyes open, and he looks around. The dim lighting makes it hard to see in here, but he can still tell that he's most definitely not in his bed, or even in some girl's house. He's in a cave, a cave that's been converted into a workshop. There's tables covered in diagrams, and shelves loaded with tools. Some parts belonging to his more dangerous weapons are lying around, in boxes and on tables.

He doesn't like that he doesn't actually recognize the workshop, that he doesn't know how his weapons got here. He may be a weapons manufacturer, but he's very careful to only sell his goods to the good guys, like the US army and NATO. He doesn't like handing nations that level of power, the ability to completely destroy another country. His conscience is assuaged a bit, knowing that governments are bridled by both bureaucracy and public opinion, and that they wouldn't fire without careful consideration. Modern weapons are powerful, but mainly serve as deterrents. Everyone's too scared to start a world war. They all know that the first shot will trigger a holocaust, destroying nations, decimating economies. Kill millions, if not billions, of people.

But the commies in North Korea, or the shit-faced terrorists that keep on trying to blow up his country? He'd never give _them _the power to start a world war. Dictatorships and fringe extremist groups, both with strong anti-West leanings, are entirely too unstable and too autonomous to be trusted with WMDs. They might decide to blow up the world in some fit of pique. He'd never approve a sale to them.

And yet, he's in a cave, surrounded by deadly weapons, all proudly emblazoned with the Stark Industries logo.

He somehow doesn't think the cave belongs to the US Army.

'Mr. Stark?'

He starts, and twists around to face the voice. The dull throb in his chest spikes for a brief, terrifying moment, and his entire world collapses into a haze of pain.

A second, a day, a year later, he finds himself back in the cave, and sees a man standing in front of him.

'You're awake,' the man says. He has a slight accent, one that Tony cannot place.

Tony nods slowly, careful not to make any movement that could reignite the fiery pain in his chest.

He looks down, to see just what happened to him to make his chest feel this way, and starts to panic. There's a metal monstrosity implanted in his chest, hooked up to a car battery that's sitting on a nearby table.

'What . . . what is this?' he manages.

'How much do you remember?' the man asks.

Tony breathes slowly, in and out, timing his breaths.

'I was in Afghanistan,' he says slowly.

'You still are.'

'I was in a Humvee, going to a weapons demo. And then, then, there was an explosion. And then I . . . drowned?' That doesn't make much sense. He's in a freaking cave in a freaking desert.

The man shakes his head. 'Waterboarding. It's a form of torture.'

His mind flashes back, and he suddenly can't breathe, can't force any air into his lungs. His head feels light, and he almost feels like he's floating. The room's spinning around him. He can't keep himself steady, feels like he's about to collapse.

He distantly hears a shouted, 'Mr. Stark!', and then suddenly there's a sharp pain in his arm, a stinging counterpoint to the throbbing in his chest.

Tony realizes he's shaking; deep, rhythmic shudders are racking his whole body. His heart's pounding, and he's covered in sweat.

'Panic attack,' the man says. 'You weren't breathing, and I had to slap you to jolt you out of it. Would you like some water?'

Tony nods, and sits back on his cot. He slowly sips from the cup the man brings him, and starts mentally reciting the digits of pi. It's a relaxation technique he learned years ago, when his dad yelled at him, when he needed something to concentrate on so he wouldn't talk back. In the weeks after the car crash, when he was

'Who did this to me?' he asks when he's calmer, tapping his chest carefully.

'I did.' He rattles a small jar of metal shards. 'Shrapnel. I got the biggest pieces out, and that,' he nods at Tony's chest, 'is preventing the rest from reaching your heart. Without it, you'd be dead within a week.'

'So I'm going to be wired to a car battery for the rest of my life?' Tony asks. 'No offense, but I'm pretty sure I could come up with a more efficient solution to the shrapnel problem.' He _is _an engineering genius, after all, even if people tend to forget it between the girls and the parties and the drinking. Ideas and schematics race through his mind, and he begins designing a more organic, more elegant, energy source.

'No. You're hooked up to a car battery that's been shackled to a table.'

Tony gapes at him, and gets up to examine the battery. A heavy chain is crisscrossed over it, and disappears under the table. The chain's locked, with one of those great big padlocks that need a key to unlock it. Just to test it, he tries to pick up the battery, but there's no give. He tries to shove it along the table, but it doesn't move.

He walks away from the table to test his range. He moves about five feet before the wire starts pulling uncomfortably on his chest.

It's not that couldn't find another way to prevent him from dying. It's that they _don't want to_. They're using the car battery to tether him, chain him, limit his movements.

For the first time since he woke up here, it hits him. He's a prisoner. A prisoner who can't move five feet away from a table, unless he wants to rip out the wires that are keeping him alive.

'You don't have the keys?' Tony asks, just to make sure.

The man shakes his head. 'Only they do.'

'Why aren't you chained up too?' Tony asks eventually.

'Because I am not the great Tony Stark, the famous billionaire playboy. The genius architect who designed the weapons that every terrorist group in this desert would literally do _anything_ to get to get their hands on. They want you, but they're just a little bit scared of what you can do.'

Well. At least someone recognizes just how dangerous he could be, if he ever decided to go rogue.

'Who are you, then?' he asks.

'My name's Yinsen. I made the mistake of letting them see I was educated when they raided my village. I've been their slave ever since.' Yinsen sounds resigned as he says this.

'What were you doing?' Tony finds himself asking.

'The raid, it was not peaceful,' he says. 'I was tending to the wounded. I'm a doctor.' He's speaking quickly, and Tony notices that his accent has become stronger. He sounds nervous, flustered.

'Must have been a hell of a training program if you put this together,' Tony says, gesturing at the chest piece. He wants to distract Yinsen from his past, wants to remove him from the clearly painful memories he has of that day.

'I also have a PhD in physics.' His voice is steadier now, and he seems to welcome the distraction.

'That's pretty cool,' Tony says. 'So, you wanna tell me about the bad guys?'

'They're known as the Ten Rings,' Yinsen says. 'They're a terrorist group.'

And there isn't much to say after that.

'Can we maybe have some sort of fruit to go with this?' he asks the guard who brought the shitty bread he's eating for breakfast. That he ate for dinner last night. And lunch yesterday. And every other meal since he's woken up here. 'Or some protein? You know, a varied diet, it's a thing.' The guard just looks at him, hard and long, and his hand twitches towards his gun. 'Or not, that works too,' Tony says quickly.

'I'm not even going to ask them about their alcoholic beverage selection,' he mutters to Yinsen after the guard leaves. And Yinsen smirks. He totally does, and Tony's ego is not imagining it.

'Have any idea what they're waiting for?' he asks Yinsen around the dry, tasteless bread. He wants to drink some water, but they don't give them that much, and he would rather save his ration for later that day, when the Afghani heat turns the cave into a humid and smelly hellhole. 'I mean, I've been here for six days. Why don't they just hand me some tools and order me to design them some weapons of mass destruction? '

'I don't know,' Yinsen says.

'Why do you think you're here?' He's been wondering that, because Tony's the weapons guy. Yinsen's physics degree allows him to follow along as Tony waxes poetic about the schematics of his tech, but he's clearly not a weapons guru.

'Because you speak English, and they don't.'

'So you're like a translator.'

Yinsen nods.

'How many languages you speak then?'

'Five. Farsi. Pashto. Kurdish. English. Urdu.' As he says the last, he gestures at the security camera.

Tony hates that camera. It's a symbol, even more than the shackled car battery, that he's always under surveillance, that he's at their mercy.

That he's a prisoner.

For someone who used to use his eccentric billionaire label to get away with anything and everything he wanted, the change in status is pretty jarring.

'Obie,' he gasps out. 'You, you're responsible for this?' He tries to lunge at him, but he again forgets about the stupid car battery, the great hulking metal box that tethers him to the table. He stumbles and falls to the floor, gasping for breath.

'Oh, Tony. Dear, dear Tony. I lucked out, didn't I?' Obie smiles at him, with that subtle little smirk that always seemed so helpful, so willing. So sly. 'You were always so distracted, with the girls, the parties, the drinking. You never really had time for the company. Never paid too much attention to what I was doing. It was easy, so easy, to get you to trust me. And you were always _so _willing to listen to Uncle Obie's recommendations. And if some weapons go missing, and Uncle Obie doesn't mention it to you, well, how would you ever find out?'

The two-timing bastard. He's been double-dealing, manipulating him. He lied, pretending to be the supportive father-figure, while he's been stealing from him, betraying him the whole time.

'And now, the public thinks you're dead. But you're not. I'm going to keep you here, and your brilliant, clever, mind is going to design me new weapons. Better weapons. Weapons that make your new Jericho missile look like a child's toy. I'm going to sell those weapons, Tony, to the highest bidder, whoever they are. And I'm going to be richer than you ever were.'

'You're nuts,' Tony whispers. 'The whole world's going to burn.'

'It might,' Stane says easily. 'And I'll be ruling the ashes if it does.'

'I'm not going to do it,' Tony says.

'Oh, Tony. Poor, naïve Tony.' Stane smiles again, and Tony just wishes he'd stop saying his name in that fake-sweet voice. 'Did you know, Tony, that I have dear Miss Potts and Colonel Rhodes under surveillance, twenty four hours a day, every day? We wouldn't want something to happen to them, would we? Or, who knows? A Stark Industries factory might blow up, killing thousands of employees.

Tony stares at him for a long minute, breathing hard, and then shakes his head once, slowly.

'That's my boy. It seems we have an understanding then. You're going to design me weapons, and I'm going to go back to America now. I'm a busy man, now, after all. The CEO has so, so much to do.'

And that's why Tony's just been sitting around. Stane's been using the last six days to cement his new status as CEO, to make sure that the board was willing to follow him. Now that he's secure in his power in the company, he feels comfortable enough to leave and deal with Tony.

'I'm going to have some files and some parts sent over tomorrow. You'll be under constant surveillance, of course, and I suggest you start working hard. Miss Potts is not a strong woman, and I'm sure her body wouldn't survive too many . . . accidents.'

He turns, and leaves the cave.

And Tony hates him, for taking over his company, for threatening Pepper and Rhodey.

He hates himself even more for giving in to Stane in order to protect them.

TBC


End file.
